From Symptom to Reality in Modern History

Lecture III

I have already indicated a few of the
symptomatic forces that play a part in the development of
contemporary history. I have only time to discuss a few of
these impulses. To discuss them all — or even the most
significant — would take us too far. I have been asked
to give special attention to specific impulses of a
symptomatic nature. This can be deferred until next week when
I will willingly speak of those symptoms which have special
reference to Switzerland and at the same time I will attempt
to give a sketch of Swiss history.

Today, however,
I propose to continue the studies we have already undertaken.
I concluded my lecture yesterday with a picture, albeit a
very inadequate picture, of the development in recent times
of one of the most significant Symptoms of contemporary
history — socialism. Now for many who are earnestly
seeking to discover the real motive forces of evolution, this
social, or rather socialist movement occupies the focus of
attention; apart from socialism they have never really
considered the Claims of anything else. Consequently people
have failed in recent times to give adequate attention to the
very important influence of something which tends to escape
their notice. Even where they searched for new motives they
paid no attention to those of a spiritual nature. If we ask
how far people were aware of the impulses characteristic of
modern evolution we can virtually discount from the outset
those personalities who in the nineteenth century, and more
especially in the twentieth century, were largely oblivious
of contemporary evolution, who belonged to those circles
which were indifferent to contemporary trends. The historians
of the old upper classes were content to plough the old
furrows, to record the genealogy of dynasties, the history of
wars and perhaps other related material. It is true that
studies in the history of civilization have been written, but
these studies, from Buckle to Ratzel, take little account of
the real driving forces of history. At the same time the
proletariat was thirsting for knowledge and felt an
ever-increasing desire for education. And this raised the
three questions I mentioned yesterday. But the proletariat
lacked the will to explore the more subtle interrelations of
historical development. Consequently, up to the present, a
historical symptom that has not been sufficiently emphasized
is the historical significance of the natural scientific mode
of thinking.

One can of
course speak of the scientific mode of thinking in terms of
its content or in relation to the transformation of modern
thinking. But it is important to consider in what respect
this scientific thinking has become a historical symptom like
the others I have mentioned — the national impulse, the
accumulation of insoluble political problems, etcetera. In
fact, since the beginning of the epoch of the Consciousness
Soul, the scientific mode of thinking has steadily increased
amongst wide sections of the population. It is a mistake to
imagine that only those think scientifically who have some
acquaintance with natural science. That is quite false; in
fact the reverse is true. Natural scientists think
scientifically because that is the tendency of the vast
majority of people today. People think in this way in the
affairs of daily life — the peasant in the fields, the
factory worker at his bench, the financier when he undertakes
financial transactions. Everywhere we meet with scientific
thinking and that is why scientists themselves have gradually
adopted this mode of thought. It is necessary to rectify a
popular misconception on this subject. It is not the mode of
thinking of scientists or even of monistic visionaries that
must engage our attention, but the mode of thinking of the
general public. For natural science cannot provide a
sufficiently powerful counterpoise to the universalist
impulse of the church of Rome. What provides this
counterpoise is a universal thinking that is in conformity
with the laws of nature. And we must study this impulse as
symptom in relation to the future evolution of modern
man.

Text-books of
history, rather thoughtlessly, usually date the birth of
modern times from the discovery of America and the invention
of gunpowder and printing, etcetera. If we take the trouble
to study the course of recent history we realize that these
symptomatic events — the discovery of America, the
invention of gunpowder, and the art of printing, etcetera
— did in fact inspire seamen and adventurers to pioneer
voyages of exploration, that they popularized and diffused
traditional knowledge, but that fundamentally they did not
change the substance of European civilization in the ensuing
centuries. We realize that the old political impulses which
were revived in the different countries nonetheless remained
the same as before because they were unable to derive any
notable benefit from these voyages of discovery. In the newly
discovered countries they simply resorted to conquest as they
had formerly done in other territories: they mined and
transported gold and so enriched themselves. In the sphere of
printing they were able increasingly to control the apparatus
of censorship. But the political forces of the past were
unable to derive anything in the nature of a decisive impulse
from these discoveries which were said to mark the birth of
modern times. It was through the fusion of the scientific
mode of thinking — after it had achieved certain
results — with these earlier inventions and discoveries
in which science had played no part that the really
significant impulse of modern times arose. The colonizing
activities of the various countries in modern times would be
unthinkable without the contributions of modern science. The
modern urge for colonization was the consequence of the
achievements of natural science in the technical field. It
was only possible to conquer foreign territories, as
colonization was destined to do with the aid of scientific
inventions, with the application of scientific techniques.
These colonizing activities therefore first arose in the
eighteenth century when natural science began to be
transformed into technics.

Applied science
marks the beginning of the machine age, and with it a new era
of colonization which gradually spreads over the whole world.
With technics an extremely important impulse of modern
evolution is born in the Consciousness Soul. Those who
understand the determinative factors here are aware that the
impulses behind worldwide colonial expansion, that these
colonizing activities and aspirations are directly related to
the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. This epoch, as you know,
will end in the third millenium, to be followed by the epoch
of the Spirit Self, and will as the result of colonization
bring about a different configuration of mankind throughout
the world. Now the epoch of the Consciousness Soul recognizes
that there are so-called civilized and highly civilized men,
and others who are extremely primitive — so primitive
that Rousseau was captivated by their primitive condition and
elaborated his theory of the ‘noble savage.’ In the course of
the epoch of the Consciousness Soul this differentiation will
cease — how it will cease we cannot now
discuss in detail. But it is the function of the
Consciousness Soul to end this differentiation which is a
heritage from the past.

Armed with this
knowledge we see the connection between wars such as the
American Civil War and modern colonizing activities in their
true light. When we bear in mind the importance of these
colonizing activities for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul
then we gain insight into the full significance of isolated
symptoms in this field. And these colonizing activities are
inconceivable without the support of scientific thinking.

We must really
give heed to this scientific thinking, if, from the point of
view of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the
Consciousness Soul, we wish to penetrate to the true reality
of human evolution. It is a characteristic of this modern
scientific thinking that it can only apprehend the
‘corpse’ of reality, the phantom. We must be
quite clear about this, for it is important. The scientific
method starts from observation and proceeds to
experimentation, and this applies in all spheres. Now there
is a vast difference between the observation of nature and
the knowledge which is confirmed by experimental proof.
Observation of nature — with different nuances — was
common to all epochs. But when man observes nature he becomes
one with nature and shares in the life of nature. But,
strangely enough, this communion with nature blunts the
consciousness to some extent. One cannot live the life of
nature and at the same time know or cognize in the sense in
which the modern Consciousness Soul understands this term.
One cannot do both at the same time any more than one can be
asleep and awake at the same time. If one wishes to live in
communion with nature one must be prepared in a certain sense
to surrender one's consciousness to nature. And that is why
the observation of nature cannot fathom its secrets, because
when man observes nature his consciousness is somewhat dimmed
and the secrets of nature escape him. In order to apprehend
the secrets of nature he must be alive to the
super-sensible.

One cannot
develop the Consciousness Soul in a semiconscious state, a
state of diminished consciousness, and therefore modern
natural science quite instinctively attempts to dispense with
observation and to depend upon experimentation for its
findings. Experiments have been undertaken even in the fields
of biology and anthropology. Now in experimentation the first
consideration is to select and assemble the material, to
determine the order of procedure. In experimental embryology
for example, the order of procedure is determined not by
nature but by intellection or human intelligence; it is
determined by an intellectual faculty which is detached from
nature and is centred in man. ‘We murder to
dissect’— our knowledge of nature is derived from
experimental investigation. Only what is acquired
experimentally can be exploited technically. Knowledge of
nature only becomes ripe for technical exploitation when it
has passed through the indirect process of experimentation.
The knowledge of nature which hitherto had been introduced
into social life had not yet reached the stage of technics.
It would be monstrous to speak of technics unless it is
concerned purely with the application of experimentation to
the social order or to what serves the social order.

Thus modern man
introduces into the social order the results of experimental
knowledge in the form of technics; that is to say, he brings
in the forces of death. Let us not forget that we bring
forces of death into our colonizing activities; that when we
construct machines for industry, or submit the worker to the
discipline of the machine we are introducing forces of death.
And death permeates our modern historical structure when we
extend our monetary economy to larger or smaller territories
and when we seek to build a social order on the pattern of
modern science as we have instinctively done today. And
whenever we introduce natural science into our community life
we introduce at all times the forces of death that are self
destructive.

This is one of
the most important symptoms of our time. We can make honest
and sincere pronouncements — I do not mean merely
rhetorical pronouncements — about the great scientific
achievements of modern times and the benefits they have
brought to technics and to our social life. But these are
only half truths, for fundamentally all these achievements
introduce into contemporary life an unmistakably moribund
element which is incapable of developing of itself. The
greatest acquisitions of civilization since the fifteenth
century are doomed to perish if left to themselves. And this
is inescapable. The question then arises: if modern technics
is simply a source of death, as it must inevitably be, why
did it arise? Certainly not in order to provide mankind with
the spectacle of machines and industry, but for a totally
different reason. It arose precisely because of the seeds of
death it bore within it; for if man is surrounded by a
moribund, mechanical civilization it is only by reacting
against it that he can develop the Consciousness Soul. So
long as man lived in communion with nature, i.e. before the
advent of the machine age, he was open to suggestion because
he was not fully conscious. He was unable to be fully
self-sufficient because he had not yet experienced the forces
of death. Ego-consciousness and the forces of death are
closely related. I have already tried to show this in a
variety of ways: In ideation and cognition, for example, man
is no longer in contact with the life-giving, vitalizing
forces within him; he is given over to the forces of organic
degeneration. I have tried to show that we owe the
possibility of conscious thought to the process of organic
degeneration, to the processes of destruction and death. If
we could not develop in ourselves ‘cerebral
hunger’, that is to say, processes of catabolism, of
degeneration and disintegration, we could not behave as
intelligent beings, we should be vacillating, indecisive
creatures living in a semiconscious, dream-like state. We owe
our intellection to the degenerative processes of the brain.
And the epoch of the Consciousness Soul must provide man with
the opportunity to experience disintegration in his
environment. We do not owe the development of modern,
conscious thinking to a superabundant vitality. This
conscious thinking, this very core of man's being grew and
developed because it was imbued with the forces of death
inherent in modern technology, in modern industry and
finance. And that is what the life of the Consciousness Soul
demanded.

And this
phenomenon is seen in other spheres. Let us recur to the
impulses to which I drew attention earlier. Let us consider
the case of England where we saw how a specific form of
parliamentary government develops as a certain tendency
through the centuries, how the self-dependent personality
seeks to realize itself. The personality wishes to emancipate
itself and to become self-sufficient. It wishes to play a
part in the life of the community and at the same time to
affirm its independence. The parliamentary system of
government is only one means of affirming the personality.
But when the individual who participates in parliamentary
government asserts himself, the moment he sacrifices his will
to the vote he surrenders his personality. And, rightly
understood, the rise of parliamentary government in England
in the centuries following upon the civil wars of the
fifteenth century provides ample evidence of this. In the
early years of the democratic system society was based upon a
class structure, the various classes or ‘estates’
not only wishing to affirm their class status, but to express
their views through the ballot-box. They were free to speak;
but people are not satisfied with speeches and mutual
agreement, they want to vote. When one votes, when speeches
are followed by voting, one kills what lives in the soul even
whilst one speaks. Thus every form of parliamentary
government ends in levelling down, in egalitarianism. It is
born of the affirmation of the personality and ends with the
suppression of the personality. This situation is
inescapable; affirmation of the personality leads to
suppression of the personality. It is a cyclic process like
life itself which begins with birth and ends in death. In the
life of man birth and death are two distinct moments in time;
in the life of history, the one is directly related to the
other, birth and death are commixed and commingled. We must
never lose sight of this.

I do not wish
you to take these remarks as a criticism of parliamentary
government. That would be tantamount to insinuating that I
said: since man is born only to die he ought never to have
been born — which is absurd. One should not impute to the
world such foolishness — that it permits man to be born
only to die. Please do not accuse me of saying that
parliamentary government is absurd because the personality
which gives birth to this system proceeds to destroy the
system which it has itself created. I simply wish to relate
it directly to life, to that which is common to all
life — birth and death, thus showing that it is something
that is closely associated with reality. At the same time I
want to show you the characteristic feature of all external
phenomena of a like nature in the epoch of the Consciousness
Soul, for they are all subject to birth and death.

Now in the
inner circles of the occult lodges of the English speaking
world it has often been said: let us not reveal to the world
the mystery of birth and death, for in so doing we shall
betray to the uninitiated the nature of the modern epoch! We
shall transmit to them a knowledge that we wish to reserve
for ourselves. Therefore it was established as the first rule
of the masonic lodges never to speak openly of the mystery of
birth and death, to conceal the fact that this mystery is
omnipresent, above all in historical phenomena. For to speak
of this is to open the eyes of the public to the tragedy of
modern life which will gradually be compelled  a compulsion to
which it will not easily submit — to divert man's
attention from the results of work to the work itself. One
must find joy in work, saying to oneself: the external
rewards of work in the present epoch serve the purposes of
death and not of creative life. If one is unwilling to
further the forces of death, one cannot work with modern
techniques, for today man is the servant of the machine. He
who rejects the machine simply wishes to return to the
past.

Study the
history of France and the attempts made to thrust inwards the
emancipation of the personality, ending in that disastrous
suppression of the personality which we observe in the final
phase of the French Revolution and in the rise of
Napoleonism. Or take the case of Italy. From what hidden
springs did modern Italy derive that dynamic energy which
inflamed the nationalism to the point of sacro
egoismo? One must probe beneath the surface in order to
discover the factors underlying world events. Recall for a
moment that important moment before the birth of the
Consciousness Soul. This dynamic energy peculiar to modern
Italy is derived in all its aspects from that which the
Papacy had implanted in the Italian soul. The significance of
the Papacy for Italy lies in the fact that it has gradually
imbued the Italian soul with its own spirit. And, as so often
happens to the magician's apprentice, the result was not what
was intended — a violent reaction against the Papacy
itself in modern Italy. Here we see how that for which one
strives provokes its own destruction. Not the thoughts, but
the forces of sensibility and enthusiasm, even those which
inspired Garibaldi, are relics of the one-time Catholic
fervour — but when these forces changed direction they
turned against Catholicism.

People will
understand the present epoch only if they grasp the right
relationship between these things. Europe witnessed those
various symptomatic events which I have described to you. And
in the East, as if in the Background, we see the
configuration of Russia, welded out of the remnants of the
Byzantine ecclesiastical framework, out of the
Nordic-Slavonic racial impulse and out of Asianism which is
diffused in a wide variety of forms over Eastern Europe. But
this triad is uncreative; it does not emanate from the
Russian soul itself, nor is it characteristic of that which
lives in the Russian soul. What is it that offers the
greatest imaginable contrast to the emancipation of the
personality? — The Byzantine element. A great
personality of modern times who is much underrated is
Pobjedonoszeff. He was an eminent figure who was steeped in
the Byzantine tradition. He could only desire the reverse of
what the epoch of the Consciousness Soul seeks to achieve and
of what it develops naturally in man. Even if the Byzantine
element had made deeper inroads into Russian orthodoxy, even
if this element which stifles everything personal and
individual had gained an even stronger hold ... the sole
consequence nonetheless would have been a powerful age for
the emancipation of the personality. If, in the study of
modern Russian history, you do not read of those events which
it has always been forbidden to record, then you will not
have a true picture of Russian history, you will be unaware
of the really living element. If however you read the
official version, the only version permitted hitherto by the
authorities, you will find everything which pervades Russian
life as an instrument of death. It appears here in its most
characteristic form because Russian life is richest in future
promise. And because Russian life bears within it the seeds
of the development of the Spirit Self, all the external
achievements of the era of the Consciousness Soul hitherto
bring only death and destruction. And this had to be, since
what seeks to develop as Spirit Self needs the substratum of
death.

We must
recognize that this is a necessity for the evolution of the
Consciousness Soul, otherwise we shall never grasp the real
needs of our time. We shall be unable to form a clear picture
of the destructive forces which have overtaken mankind if we
are unaware that the events of these last four years are
simply an epitome of the forces of death that have pervaded
the life of mankind since the birth of the epoch of the
Consciousness Soul.

Characteristically the dead hand of scientific thinking has
exercised a strange influence upon one of the most prophetic
personalities of recent time. In contemporary history the
following incident is symptomatic and will always remain
memorable. In the year 1830 in Weimar, Soret
[ Note 1]
visited Goethe who received him
with some excitement — I mean he betrayed excitement in
his demeanour — but not with deep emotion. Goethe said
to Soret: ‘At last the controversy has come to a head,
everything is in flames’. He made a few additional
remarks which led Soret to believe that Goethe was referring
to the revolution which had broken out in Paris in 1830 and
he answered him accordingly. But Goethe replied: ‘I am not
referring to the revolution; that is not particularly
important. What is important is the controversy between
Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire in the Academy of
Sciences of Paris’ — Cuvier was a representative of the
old school which simply compares and classifies organisms
— a way of looking at nature that is concerned above
all with technique — whilst Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire
has a living conception of the whole course of evolution.
Goethe saw Saint-Hilaire as the leader of a new school of
scientific thinking, different from that of Copernicus,
Kepler and Galileo. Cuvier belongs to the old school of
thought; Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is the representative of a
scientific outlook which sees nature as a living organism.
Therefore Goethe saw the dawn of a new epoch when Geoffroy de
Saint-Hilaire prepared the ground for a new scientific
thinking which, when fully developed, must lead to a
super-sensible interpretation of nature and ultimately to
super-sensible, clairvoyant knowledge. For Goethe this was the
revolution of 1830, not the political events in Paris. Thus
Goethe showed himself to be one of the most prescient spirits
of his time. He showed that he sensed and felt what was the
cardinal issue of our time.

Today we must
have the courage to look facts squarely in the face, a
courage of which earlier epochs had no need. We must have the
courage to follow closely the course of events, for it is
important that the Consciousness Soul can fulfil its
development. In earlier epochs the development of the
Consciousness Soul was not important. Because the
Consciousness Soul is of paramount importance in the present
epoch, everything that man creates in the social sphere must
be consciously planned. Consequently his social life can no
longer be determined by the old instinctive life; nor can he
introduce solely the achievements of natural science into
social life for these are forces of death and are unable to
quicken life; they are simply dead-sea fruit and sow
destruction such as we have seen in the last four years. In
the present epoch the following is important.

Sleep, of
course, is a necessity for man. In waking life he is in
control of his normal free will ... he can make use of this
free will for the various things he encounters through
Lucifer and Ahriman, in order to develop guide-lines for the
future. When he falls asleep this so called free will ceases
to function; he continues to think without knowing it, but
his thinking is no less efficacious. Thinking does not cease
on falling asleep, it continues until the moment of waking.
One simply forgets this in the moment of waking up. We are
therefore unaware of the power of those thoughts that pour
into the human soul from the moment of falling asleep until
the moment of waking up. But let us remember that for the
epoch of the Consciousness Soul the gods have abandoned the
human soul during sleep. In earlier epochs the gods instilled
into the human soul between sleeping and waking what they
chose to impart. If they had continued to act in this way man
would not have become a free being. Consequently he is now
open to all kinds of other influences between sleeping and
waking. At a pinch we can live our waking life with natural
science and its achievements, but they are of no avail in
sleep and death. We can only think scientifically during our
waking hours. The moment we fall asleep, scientific thinking
is meaningless — as meaningless as speaking French in a
country where no one understands a word of French. In sleep
only that language has significance which one acquires
through super-sensible knowledge, the language which has its
source in the super-sensible. Supersensible knowledge must
take the place of what the gods in former times had implanted
in the instinctive life. The purpose of the present epoch of
the Consciousness Soul is this: man must open himself to
super-sensible impulses and penetrate to a knowledge of
reality. To believe that everything that our present age has
produced and still produces without the support of
super-sensible impulses is something living and creative and
not impregnated with the forces of death is to harbour an
illusion, just as it is an illusion to believe that a woman
can bear a child without fecundation. Without impregnation a
woman today remains sterile and dies without issue. Modern
civilization in the form it has developed since the beginning
of the fifteenth century and especially in respect of its
outstanding achievements, is destined to remain sterile
unless fertilized henceforth by impulses from the
super-sensible world. Everything that is not fertilized by
spiritual impulses is doomed to perish. In this epoch of the
Consciousness Soul, though you may introduce democracy,
parliamentary government, modern finance economy, modern
industrialism, though you may introduce the principle of
nationality the world over, though you may advocate all those
principles on which men Base what they call the new order
— a subject on which they descant like drunken men who
have no idea what they are talking about — all these
things will serve only the forces of death unless they are
fructified by spiritual impulses. All that we must inevitably
create today, forces that bring death in all domains, will
only be of value if we learn how to transform these forces by
our insights into the super-sensible.

Let us realize
the seriousness of this situation and let us remember —
as we have learnt from our study of the symptoms of recent
history — that what man considers to be his greatest
achievements, natural science, sociology, modern industrial
techniques and modern finance economy, all date from the
fifteenth century. These are destructive agents unless
fructified by spiritual impulses. Only then can they advance
the evolution of mankind. Then they have positive value; in
themselves they are detrimental. Of all that mankind today
extols, not without a certain pride and presumption, as his
greatest achievements, nothing is good in itself; it is only
of value when permeated with spirit.

This is not an
arbitrary expression of opinion, but a lesson we learn from a
study of the symptoms of modern history. The time has now
come when we must develop individual consciousness. And we
must also be aware of what we may demand of this
consciousness. The moment we begin to dogmatize, even
unwittingly, we impede the development of the consciousness.
I must therefore remind you once again of the following
incident. I happened to be giving a course of lectures in
Hamburg on
The Bible and Wisdom.
[ Note A ]
Amongst the audience were two Catholic
priests. Since I had said nothing of a polemical nature which
could offend a Catholic priest and since they were not the
type of Jesuit who is a watchdog of the Church and whose
function is to stick his fingers in every pie, but ordinary
parish priests, they approached me after the lecture and
said: we too preach purgatory; you also speak of a time of
expiation after death. We preach paradise; you speak of the
conscious experience of the Spirit; fundamentally there are
no objections to the content of your teaching. But they would
certainly have found ample grounds for objection if they had
gone more deeply into the matter — a single lecture of
course did not suffice for this. And they continued: You see
the difference between us is this: You address yourself to a
certain section of the population which is already familiar
with the premises of anthroposophy, people who are educated
and are conversant with certain concepts and ideas. We, on
the other hand speak to all men, we speak a language which
everyone can understand. And that is the right approach
— to speak for all men. Whereupon I replied: Reverend
fathers (I always believe in respecting titles) what you are
saying is beside the point. I do not doubt that you believe
you speak for all men, that you can choose your words in such
a way as to give the impression that you are speaking for all
men. But that is a subjective judgement, is it not? that is
what one usually says in self-justification. What is
important is not whether we believe we speak for all men, but
the facts, the objective reality. And now I should like to
ask you, in an abstract, theoretical way: what evidence is
there that I do not speak for all men? You claim to speak
for all men and no doubt there are arguments that would
support your claim. But I ask you for the facts. Do all those
for whom you think you are able to speak still attend your
church today? That is the real question. Of course my two
interlocutors could not claim that everyone attended their
church regularly. You see, I continued, that I am concerned
with the facts. I speak for those who are outside the church,
who also have the right to be led to the Christ. I realize
that amongst them there are those who want to hear of the
Christ impulse one way or another. That is a reality. And
what matters is the reality, not personal opinions.

It is most
desirable to base one's opinions on facts and not on
subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the
Consciousness Soul nothing is more dangerous than to
surrender to, or show a predilection for personal opinions or
prejudices. In order to develop the Consciousness Soul we
must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly;
the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be
determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface
of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict
between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and
the compulsion of facts. And this is of particular importance
when studying history, for we shall never have a true picture
of history unless we see history as a truly great teacher. We
must not force the facts to fit history, but allow history to
speak for itself. In this respect the whole world has
forgotten much in the last four years. Facts are scarcely
allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to
be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time.
And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to
apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the
Consciousness Soul what matters in all spheres of life is an
objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire
an impartial attitude to reality.

What our epoch
demands — if we wish gradually to look beyond the
Symptoms of history (I will speak more of this in my next
lectures) — is that we turn our attention to those
spiritual forces which can restore man's creativity. For, as
we have seen, the most characteristic feature of all
phenomena today is a decline in creativity. Man must open
himself to the influences of the super-sensible world so that
what his Spirit Self prepares may enter into his ego;
otherwise the paths to the Spirit Self would be closed to
him. Man therefore must familiarize himself with that which
is pure spirit, with that which can penetrate to the centre
of his psychic life. The moment he is prepared to turn his
attention to this centre of his soul life through a sensible
study of the symptoms in history, he will also be prepared to
examine more objectively the events at the periphery.

In man there
exists a polarity — the psychic centre and the
periphery. As he penetrates ever more deeply into his psychic
and spiritual life he reaches this centre. In this centre he
must open himself to those historical impulses which I have
already described to you. Here he will feel an ever
increasing urge for the spirit if he wishes to become
acquainted with historical reality. In return however, he
will also feel a desire to strive towards the opposite pole
at the periphery. He will develop an understanding for what
is pressing towards the periphery — his somatic nature.
If in order to understand history we must look inward, as I
have indicated, to the underlying symptoms, then in order to
understand medicine, for example, hygiene and medical health
services we must look outwards, to cosmic rhythms for the
source of pathological symptoms.

Just as modern
history fails to penetrate to spiritual realities, so modern
medicine, modern hygiene and medical health services fail to
penetrate to the symptoms which are of cosmic provenance. I
have often emphasized the fact that the individual cannot
help his neighbour, however deep his insight into current
problems, because today they are in the hands of those who
are looking for the wrong solution. They must become the
responsibility of those who are moving in the right
direction. Clearly, just as the external facts are true that
the outward aspect of James I was such and such, as I pointed
out earlier, so, from the external point of view it is also
true that a certain kind of bacillus is connected with the
present influenza epidemic. But if it is true, for example,
that rats are carriers of the bubonic plague, one cannot say
that rats are responsible for the plague. People have always
imagined that the bubonic plague was spread by rats. But
bacilli, as such, are of course in no way connected with
disease. In phenomena of this kind we must realize that just
as behind the symptoms of history we are dealing with psychic
and spiritual experiences, so too behind somatic symptoms we
are dealing with experiences of a cosmological order. In
other cases the situation of course will be different! What
is especially important here is the rhythmic course of cosmic
events, and it is this that we must study. We must ask
ourselves: In what constellation were we living when, in the
nineties, the present influenza epidemic appeared in its
benign form? In what cosmic constellation are we living at
the present time? By virtue of what cosmic rhythm does the
influenza epidemic of the nineties appear in a more acute
form today? Just as we must look for a rhythm behind a series
of historical symptoms, so we must look for a rhythm behind
the appearance of certain epidemics.

In the
solfatara regions of Italy one need only hold a naked flame
over the fango hole and immediately gases and steam escape
from the dormant volcano. This Shows that if one performs a
certain action above the surface of the earth nature reacts
by producing these effects. Do you regard it as impossible
that something takes place in the sun — since its rays
are directed daily towards the earth — which has
significance for the earth emanations and is related to the
life of man, and that this reaction varies according to the
different geographical localities? Do you think that we shall
have any understanding of these matters unless we are
prepared to accept a true cosmology founded upon a knowledge
of the soul and spirit? The statement that man's inclination
to resort to war is connected with the periodic appearance of
sun spots is, of course, regarded as absurd. But there comes
a point when statements of this kind cease to be absurd, when
certain pathological manifestations in the emotional life are
seen to be connected with cosmological phenomena such as the
periodic appearance of sun spots. And when tiny creatures,
these petty tyrants — bacilli or rats — really
transmit from one human being to another something that is
related to the cosmos, then this transmission is only a
secondary phenomenon. This can be easily demonstrated and
consequently finds wide public support — but it is not
the main issue. And we shall not come to terms with the main
issue unless we have the will to study the peripheral
symptoms as well.

I do not
believe that men will acquire a more reasonable and catholic
view of history unless they study historical symptomatology
in the light of super-sensible knowledge which is so necessary
for mankind today. Men will only achieve results in the
sphere of health, hygiene and medicine if they study not
historical, but cosmological symptoms. For the diseases we
suffer on earth are visitations from heaven. In order to
understand this we must abandon the preconceived ideas which
are prevalent today. We have an easy explanation: a God is
omnipresent ... but whilst recognizing the presence of God
in history mankind today is unable to explain the manifold
retardative or harmful phenomena in history. And when we are
faced with a situation like the last four years
(1914–1918), then this business of the single God in
history becomes extremely dubious, for this God of history
has the curious habit of multiplying, and each nation defends
its national God and provokes other nations by claiming the
superiority of its own God. And when we are expected to look
to cosmology and at the same time remain comfortably attached
to this single God, then this same God inflicts disease upon
us. But when we can rise to the idea of the trinity, God,
Lucifer and Ahriman, when we are aware of this trinity in the
super-sensible world behind the historical symptoms, when we
know that this trinity is present in the cosmic universe,
then there is no need to appeal to the ‘good
God’. We then know that heaven visits disease upon us
by virtue of its association with the earth, just as I can
evoke sulphur fumes by holding a naked flame over a
solfatara. We can only advance the cause of progress in the
epoch of the Consciousness Soul, when men recognize the
validity of spiritual realities. Therefore everything depends
upon this one aim: the search, the quest for truth.